Halloween is a scary time of year, but Eircom Phonewatch likes to frighten people into buying its monitored alarm systems all year round.

While Make Me Richer agrees in principle with having a good monitored alarm (especially given the break-in earlier this year), Eircom's scare-tactic ads leave us cold. Even scarier are the set-up costs and the monthly monitoring charges, with monitoring alone costing €300 per year. Far more palatable are the monthly charges from Securigard, which are only €15 per month.